South of City Center

South of Independence Park are some of Israel’s most elegant and affluent residential areas. Rehavia, in the area trisected by A2za Rd. and Ramban St., was founded in the 1920s and became the refuge of many German Jews who fled Nazi prosecution in the 1930s. For years, it was famous as a Deutch high-culture enclave, with dark-wood libraries lined with Goethe and Schiller and Mozart playing on the gramophone. Little of the Central European flavor remains today, but the legacy lives on with the neighborhood’s many International Style houses, designed in the best tradition of German Modernism. The stone-clad buildings are remarkably well preserved (particularly compared to their contemporaries in Tel Aviv), making a walk around the lush streets of Rehavia highly rewarding for architecture enthusiasts.

In the middle of Rehavia, on Alfassi St., is Jason’s Tomb, built around 100 BC as the burial site of a wealthy Hasmonean-era Jewish family. Pottery excavated in the site indicate that three generations were buried there; charcoal drawings on the plastered porch wall depict ships, suggesting that one of the Jasons was involved in naval excursions. The pyramid on top of the tomb is reconstructed. More to the east past Azza Rd. is Israel’s Prime Minister’s official residence, in the guarded house at the corner of Balfour and Smolenskin St.-tell him what you think. Next door on Balfour St. is the Schocken Library, designed by the renowned architect Erich Mendelssohn, who spent a few years in Jerusalem in the late 1930s (his dwelling was in the windmill on Ramban St. near Kikkar Zarfat, now an upscale shopping arcade).